*LOACH*

My post was not a specific reply to his post but just a heads up to anyone in, or planning to visit, the areas affected by the bulletin who may be reading the thread as the Australian government has made certain recommendations. Not only do the recommendations have potential impact on the health and safety of the people concerned but also on the ability of people to travel, buy food and enjoy an uninterrupted power supply. In addition, while it may not be stated in the Smart Traveler bulletins, there may be some extra difficulty in claiming from insurance (travel insurance etc) if an incident occurs in an area discussed in the recommendations. For example if you tripped over and hurt yourself the insurance company may not pay your medical bills or at least increase the paperwork etc required. Therefore while my post is not directly discussing akeenans original post it is certainly related to the thread.

Firstly I just want to say how terrible the Japan earthquake was and how the ongoing effects shouldnt be forgotten regardless of the media moving on to a different subject (still more than 10 000 people missing and the nuclear plants unstable). So the following isnt meant to detract from the hardships faced by the affected people just interesting to see how dedicated some gamers are, http://www.news.com.au/technology/gaming/japan-earthquake-cant-shake-worlds-hardest-call-of-duty-fan/story-e6frfrt9-1226024777551

I posted this in the Earthquake thread as well but considering its impact hopefully the mods will forgive me. Australian governement (via Smart traveller) has increased the area people should reconsider visiting. Now it includes Tokyo. They say its due to instability in the reactor. If you are in Tokyo now you might want to head south ASAP. Be careful everyone. http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/

Australian governement (via Smart traveller) has increased the area people should reconsider visiting. Now it includes Tokyo. They say its due to instability in the reactor. If you are in Tokyo now you might want to head south ASAP. Be careful everyone. http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/

+1 If its that big an issue buy a second car for your airport runs - I suggest a Commodore wagon - one passenger, one big bag, one small bag, one double bass and still room to sleep on a matress in the back when you are too drunk to be able to swig from a JB bottle and drive at the same time

So much for this not being worse than Kobe, looks like it will end up having caused a much greater loss of life. A friend who lives in Tokyo sent me an email about what is happening now: "However, you will be surprised at grocery store in Tokyo. There are not bottle of water, milk, toilet paper, and some frozen food. I talked to a clerk, and he said he does not have food delivery to the store since the earthquake. A lot of food are coming from north east area in Tokyo.We also have blackouts because of power plants including nuclear plants were damaged. Fortunately I could go to the office today, but most of colleagues were absent. Many trains stopped. My company recommends working at home. I had very bad rush hour because of poor train schedule."

My internet is fine and I have a friend in Tokyo whose mobile is fine, she said she can see fires from her 10th floor office and the trains have stopped so she is stuck in the building for the night. We had three earthquakes in Gifu last week but they were insignificant compared to this. Japanese people have been talking about the big earthquake that they have been expecting to hit Tokyo ever since I have been here. Doesnt look like this one will have as terrible results as Kobe at least. Thanks for everyones concern, I hope some of the other guys check in soon - Streeter should be ok as I have heard Osaka was fine, I think adam87 is in Kyushuu so as long he is away from the coast he should be fine, anyone who needs somewhere to stay or whatever let me know.

I am, thanks for asking mate. I didnt even feel it but the Japanese teacher in my class did and made us all crawl under the desks. I think one of the guys on here lives in Saitama which is a lot closer - I hope he is alright.

] hehe I know what you mean - I consider myself having a good day of driving if I can spin the tyres through first, second and into third gear in a straight line, the whole turning corners thing is a bit beyond me oh well will learn someday yeah looks like an 86 - I googled it after reading your post - thanks mate

got through 5 pages of mostly tourist photos and info about an APC and gave up. I knew there was a reason I had never been to The Wasteland before I guess not being able to type Tuurkey is a mod initiated phenomenen- thanks EeLeYe Just for you mad082

WTF!!! I typed Tuurkey (spelled correctly) and it changes it to sphincter of the universe. the sphincter of the universe the sphincter of the universe the sphincter of the universe even editing the post doesnt change it

An advertisement for a place in the the sphincter of the universe written in Russian. Hmmm I would not have thought SAU would have been the target demographic.

Hi, anyone know of any part time jobs over the Japanese school holidays? My holidays start on the 16th March and happy to go anywhere in Japan - for the experience and a bit of cash as I dont get paid over the holidays. Thanks!

Thats amazing, dunno what else to say. Any idea what car he is driving?

DONE!!!!!!!!!! only took a bit over 8 days to scan and then another day or so to copy. Today off to try to explain to the shop including having to say about 4 or 5 times that I dont care about the data on the drive anymore just gimme money or another drive and understanding about 2% of the Japanese that was being said to me. Dont know whats been corrupted but so far a lot seems to have been recovered. Mini power tool data recovery 6.5 did the job although I reckon Disk Internals would have done the same job in about 2 days. Anyway big thanks to everyone who helped out. Very much appreciated.

Me OP or 8110? I have access to an address in Japan - its new and sparkling and had cardboard curtains when I moved in. 8110 do you actually live in Japan or you can just get a Japanese company to say you work for them? If the latter then maybe the investment visa elrodeo666 suggested is your best option as getting a gaijin card and hence an account may be quite difficult when not being a resident. I think it depends on which bank you are applying through as to their documentation requirements. Some require a lot but I didn't need an inkan shomeisho or even an inkan/hanko for JP. Just sign, gaijin and maybe another form of id. I also went with a Japanese friend and she might have stamped some document to say I was who I am and not a North Korean insurgent looking to kidnap a schoolgirl.

Thanks for the reply but if I buy a Mac I will have to use the same technical methodology with my car. Hence my next vehicle would be a Hummer which I would modify by replacing the engine with a Postie bikes donk, spray it babypoo brown, install the drivers seat upside down and facing backwards. I would also have to replace the steering wheel and pedals with a sphincter muscle controlled joystick. I dont like Macs. Yeah until now I have had many good experiences with WD drives but these Caviar greens dont seem too good. I bought a Samsung one to put my data on if I can recover it then the Caviar will go back for a refund/replacement. By the way thanks for latest HKS Day photos in your thread, most appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. At the moment I am still running minitool power data - has been going for 5 days straight and is at 85% done......just seems to be going slower and slower though - might never finish. I might give it the weekend and if it doesn't look like it will finish I will have to try your idea or something else. 1 week with no windows PC to play games on is not fun.....how I survived for a year and a half without one I will never fathom - ahh thats right flash games. More hours playing turret defence games and Travian than it is possible to maintain sanity with - they were dark times. Anyway thanks again.

Ahhh the Nissan Cube.....perfect for the woman who has yet to birth children and buy a mamachari

Sorry about the day in replying, as suggested by DivHunter I have been trying the tools available found through Google with little success. By doing what I think is the sector level check I can see files. I downloaded the supposedly free Disk Internals NTFS (recommended by GTRNUR) and after 30 hours of running it found the files but it then told me I need a registered version to save them, awesome!! I also have tried a bunch of other programs which havent worked yet. I dont really want to pay for a program which I hope to only ever use once. Cephas-Thanks for the idea but I dont have a case in the same country as me to plug it into. EeLey- I checked WDs site and they only recommend recovery companies that will not void your warranty - no offer of data recovery not even software only. liger-its not the first time I have used it, over a period of 2 months I have transferred 1TB of data on it, some stuff is backed up but my recent photos, Japanese language study stuff, recent document scans and a bunch of other stuff isnt. I formatted it using a Win7 PC and have only ever used it on that and a Linux machine so the XP problem shouldnt affect it. At the moment I am running minitool power data recovery but I dont have high hopes as it estimated the time for the scan to be 60 hours and yet it seems to be taking a lot longer than that. What I really want is a program that will just automatically scan and copy the drive (hopefully in one process so it doesnt have to read the 1TB to scan it, then read it again to copy it as that is what takes the time) and quarantine any corrupted files. All while maintaining as close to a bit perfect copy as possible. But any other way of getting my files back would definitely be appreciated. Any suggestions? Thanks so much for the replies- as you can see I am following them up and appreciate the time taken to try and help even if they dont work.

Yep a Linux one. It also shows this popup:

Sorry I made a mistake in the title of the thread. Windows knows the disk is there but cant access it. When I go into disk manager (Windows 7 starter) it says I need to format the drive and then in the information it says it is a healthy, active, primary partition and has the disk size, it also says it is online. But I cant even do an error check on it cos it has a pop up that says windows cant access it. Thanks for the reply.

Hi, So I bought a 2TB Western digital Caviar Green about 2 months ago and today Windows sees that the drive is connected (external USB case) but cant access it. I also tried it on my Linux machine and more or less the same thing happens. Is there any hope of recovering my 1TB of data thats on it? It has my only copies of this years Tokyo Autosalon and a bunch of other stuff on it too. Please feel free to create many and varied insults regarding me not backing stuff up. Thanks in advance.

Mines an emachines 350, in all its atom powered glory. Plays CSS with everything on high except water effects - framerate is borderline playable though - I dont know why but for some reason turning the video settings down doesnt seem to improve framerate. I will have to research and see whether upgrading to 2GB RAM makes a difference. As much as I would love a tower here its a pain when you have to cart it from prefecture to prefecture when work contracts run out. Anyway thanks again guys.

If you are just doing tourist type stuff you will be fine using only English, almost everyone in Japan has at least 6 years of learning English, most have 12 years. Many people will be embaressed to speak it but you will survive. Most train maps, street signs etc are in English and Japanese. Just dont expect to go to some dark alley with a tiny Ramen shop and discuss metaphysics with the owner and you will be fine. People are extremely understanding with foreigners.